It's another great year for GivingTuesday! From giving blood to volunteer work, Katie Zwerk from the American Red Cross explains how you can help.
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00:00You may have been doing a lot of shopping, of course, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday
00:04through the weekend. And then it's today, of course, which is Tuesday. It's Giving Tuesday,
00:08global generosity movement to focus on humanitarian donations everywhere.
00:14The American Red Cross is there for every natural disaster. Katie's work is a national
00:20spokesperson for the American Red Cross. And Miss Katie, thank you for joining us here today.
00:25Thanks for having me. As you mentioned, today's Giving Tuesday, and a lot of people are looking
00:31for ways to give with meaning. And one way you can do that is by giving the lifesaving gift of
00:37a blood donation. Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs blood. That can be cancer patients,
00:45those living with sickle cell disease, new moms, trauma victims. A single car accident
00:51victim can require as many as 100 units of blood. And when you go in to give blood,
00:56you're giving about typically one unit of blood. So as you can see, the need is great.
01:01And this is something that you can do during this time of year to give back to others.
01:05Yeah, it's such an important reminder this time of year, especially when it comes to winter
01:08weather. We see a lot of car accidents this year. And hey, speaking of big weather events with this
01:15past year, multiple hurricanes, how is the American Red Cross's relief efforts continuing
01:20in the Gulf States and throughout the Southeast? Yeah, so I'm actually in Georgia,
01:26and I was deployed during Hurricane Helene. And I saw the devastation myself on the ground. We
01:32spoke to families that trees had split their homes in half, and they had to go into shelters,
01:39Red Cross shelters. They had to receive meals and assistance from generous donors across the
01:46country. And so the need is great. These families are still struggling. Many have lost their homes,
01:53not only here in Georgia, but obviously in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina.
01:58And so, you know, on this Giving Tuesday, we're really asking people, you know,
02:03a great way that you can give back is by giving a donation. Even something as small as five or
02:08$10 can really help these families that are struggling. And how can people give to the
02:15Red Cross on Giving Tuesday? So you can give a financial donation by going to RedCross.org.
02:23You can give a blood donation by going to RedCrossBlood.org. In fact, we have these really
02:29cool socks, this incentive right now for those that give between now and December 8th while
02:35supplies last. We're celebrating 30 years of friends. As you can see, there's a fun turkey on
02:42here. Central Perk, you get not one but two socks. So if you sign up to donate blood while supplies
02:48last now between December 8th, you get these. You can give one to a friend. Or you can volunteer.
02:55You know, we're always looking for volunteers to help either in our shelters, help with disasters,
03:00because we're seeing, you know, continuous disasters over and over again because of the
03:05severe weather that we have across the country. So we always need volunteers to help those in
03:11need. Well, hopefully hearing from you today and seeing those awesome socks is giving someone the
03:17initiative to either donate blood or make that financial donation or volunteer within their
03:21community. Katie Zwerch, National Spokesperson for the American Red Cross. Thanks for joining
03:26us on AccuWeather on this Giving Tuesday. Thank you so much for having me.